Companionship, Discussion, and Hairbows
by Jack of All Suits
Summary: Being trapped indoors by a storm isn't so bad when you have technology, but when the power goes in New London, the only thing left to do is talk by firelight... and wait for the lights to come on.


**I don't know what came over me to make this. Honestly, I haven't watched SH22 in years, so if I got anything wrong, I'm really really sorry. Cut me some slack though, because I'm going by memory. Also, the thing about Holmes having black hair and gray eyes is a call back to the Canon, which I prefer. I'm seriously debating creating a multi-chapter fic involving the ACTUAL Doctor Watson being revived similarly to Holmes, just for the sake of having them both in the future... having fun... in hovercars... VROOM VROOM!**

**Anywho, None of these characters are mine, except the Holmes fangirls. BACK BEASTS. BACK.**

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For the past five days an electrical storm had been raging viciously above New London, sending the occasional bolt of lightning crashing down upon the highrise buildings that littered the city. As such, it appeared that criminals as well as hard working civilians were taking a forced break from their occupations following three unlucky individuals having been struck down by lightning within five hours of each other. Already the storm had become a record-holder for intensity and length, being that, one hundred and seventeen hours after beginning, it had yet to show any sign of weakening; in fact, it only seemed to be getting worse.

"Lestrade… what did you say this was again?"

"A movie?"

"Your attempt at wit is refreshing, but I was referring to the dubious contents _of _the film."

"Oh! Well it's a remake of something that came out in the late twentieth century. It's called a slasher flick."

"Huh… I can hardly imagine why…"

"Holmes, do be quiet, I believe that young lady is about to be brutally murdered!"

221b Baker Street was filled with the sound of shrieking teenage females and a machete tearing flesh asunder, as well as the powerful odor of popcorn. Under normal _Victorian _circumstances, this storm was just the sort of situation in which Sherlock Holmes might have found himself staring woefully out the window in an implacable fit of boredom. As it were, Lestrade had come over for dinner the night after the squall had begun(the same night as those unfortunate lightning strikes), and had thus been stuck in Baker Street until the weather cleared enough to allow safe travel.

She had, in her typical manner, decided this was an excellent chance to expand his knowledge of the less serious aspects of life in this new century. With the flat already stuffed with foods she had brought over on earlier occasions that Holmes hadn't dared attempt to eat, and no way for the Great Detective to weasel his way onto the street, it was prime time for an impromptu vacation.

So far, Holmes seemed to have taken fondly to gummy worms—in particular, orange ones— some old video games—he had laughed almost uncontrollably when she downloaded one about _him—_ and thrillers—even if he spoiled the ending by deducing it halfway through. He was least impressed with bubble gum—after blowing a memorable bubble into his hair, his amusement had faded—modern pop music—_"Lestrade, is he singing about someone's… oh good Heavens!"_—and particularly romance films—he didn't seem to appreciate certain explicit scenes that went against every Victorian standard in his mind.

It seemed the horror genre was going to join the list soon, if his distasteful look was anything to go by. Watson, on the other hand, seemed to be extremely interested and had been slowly leaning forward in his chair during the entire film. "Holmes! I believe the young man will be dying next!" He crowed excitedly.

"Unlikely, Watson. He is clearly the main focus of the film; therefore he will be the last to die. I would assume instead the blond girl will be next." Holmes grimaced when, as he predicted, the young woman fell in a twitching pile as the maniac killer lunged out of a convenient shadow. "Honestly, if each movie of this franchise is set around the same lake, why the deuce do these children keep frequenting it? And where in blazes are their parents?! Certainly if _my _daughter- had I one- ever acted in such a manner I would lock her in a room until she was fifty!"

Lestrade rolled her eyes and swallowed a mouthful of popcorn, readjusting herself on the couch, which she had successfully commandeered earlier in the evening. "Jeez Holmes, talk about a killjoy. _Obviously _no one knows about the lake until they show up. Besides, this is a new century, lots of kids act like that!"

"What about the old men that have been in the gas station at the beginning of every sequel thus far? Clearly they have all known something of the situation. And you can't be serious, Lestrade! That brunette girl seems to spend more time with her shirt off than on!" Holmes sniffed despairingly and folded his arms, his expression as near a pout as could be. "Watson certainly isn't picking any movies hereon in. These horrors are absolutely…"

"Horrible?" Lestrade offered slyly

Watson glanced at them bitterly. "Holmes, it wouldn't be as horrible if you would stop your incessant commentary and actually watch. You're simply offended by the excessive… er…"

"Sex?" The inspector piped up, a positively devious grin on her lips. "Nudity? Procreation? Statutory ra—"

"_Lestrade!_" Holmes barked uncomfortably from his own armchair. He glowered at her with the tips of his ears burning a rather amusing shade of red. "Are you quite done?"

"…_La Petite Mort_?"

"La petite mo—Agh! Honestly! You're insufferable!" Holmes cried irritably. "After that awful film about Rome you _swore_ you wouldn't put on any more with… _that_!" He pointed miserably at the screen, where two young lovers were quite actively displaying their affection for one another.

"Okay, I admit the Rome one was pretty bad, but you deserve it. You wouldn't stop talking through _my _movie."

"_It was about me_!"

"It was my favorite as a kid! Besides, you won't let _us _talk during _your_ movies!"

"Well if you would—"

Watson sighed as well as a robot could as his two companions descended into one of their infamous arguments. Honestly, how two adults could behave like such children was beyond him. They were becoming better known for their ability to step on each other's toes than for their crime-stopping skills. Sometimes Watson wondered if it wouldn't be too far fetched of him to send them to a seminar on peaceful coexistence; he would suggest it to Grayson the next chance he received.

"Oh _sure_! You'd be a shriveled up corpse if it wasn't for me, buddy!"

"My _dear_ Lestrade, I believe the company of death is more pleasurable than yours sometimes!"

Watson frowned as the argument began to build in volume, as it had several times in the last few days. If his calculations were correct(And being a robot, they generally were), it was only a matter of mere moments before one of them said something genuinely hurtful and the other stormed off in an offended rage to lick their wounds. While under normal circumstances he found it rather amusing to see them fight like the dickens, only time would tell how long they were going to be stuck in the same small area together, and he certainly was not willing to tolerate one of Holmes' _or _Lestrade's extraordinarily stony silences

He sat up, fully removing his attention from the screen before him to face his two quarrelling companions. He summoned up the courage to break up their tiff (one could not face the glares of Holmes and Lestrade without bravery) "Really now, you two, that's quite—"

_Boom!_

"—Enough?"

The room fell abruptly into silence as the background hum of computers and appliances unexpectedly stopped and the lights flicked off, plunging the three of them into silence. "Oh zed… figures the power would go…" Lestrade growled from the couch.

To Holmes, the sudden loss of power was a Godsend, for he had been on the losing side of their argument to begin with. He turned his head, shocked by how long it had been since he'd experienced complete darkness; it seemed in this new age there was always a light on somewhere. "Watson, I don't suppose you could find some candles? I assume your nightvision is fully operational."

He could hear Lestrade sitting up on the couch, cursing as she did. "Candles? Don't you guys have flashlights or anything?" There was a moment of fumbling before the dim light of her communicator burst through the darkness, vaguely illuminating the immediate area. "I can't even remember the last time New London had a power outage. Must be at least ten years."

Holmes glanced around the room for his pipe, which had apparently misplaced itself sometime between playing those ridiculous _video games_ and watching those dreadful pictures. Though finding good tobacco in the modern age was like locating the proverbial pin in the haystack, Holmes had not been willing to shift centuries without at least some familiarity, and with a bit of intense searching he'd found a small cranny in the corner of Manchester that sold tobacco almost as noxious as his original shag.

"As you so kindly just pointed out, Inspector, we've had no need for them and so it never seemed necessary to have any. Unlike in my day, it's rare that any corner of the city is not lit by some type of light now." Aha! His fingers had landed on his elusive pipe at last and Holmes scooped it up quickly, pulling some tobacco out of a nearby pouch(his Persian slipper had met it's end somewhere between centuries) and eagerly making ready his pipe. By the light of her communicator, he was rather pleased by Lestrade's expression of disgust when he lit a match and held it to the tobacco. "Is something _wrong_, Lestrade?"

Though the smoking of cigarettes and tobacco wasn't illegal, the fact remained that it had become something of a moral impropriety to do so in the company of others since his death. Especially, Lestrade often pointed out, if that person wasn't a robot and didn't smoke as well. "Great." She muttered mutinously "I'm stuck in a power out and now I'm gonna get fumigated to boot." Perhaps in bad taste, Holmes deliberately blew a smoke ring at her before crouching at the fireplace.

"What're you doing? You don't need the fireplace, remember? This place has central heating."

"Stunning deduction, my dear, but have you yet noticed that without power, our heat is gone as well?" He tossed two logs into the grate, thankful as always to his foresight in that respect. "This will also provide some much needed light… where the devil is Watson anyway?"

"Here, Holmes!" The compu-droid announced from what Holmes quickly deduced to be the hallway. "With a bit of digging I've found more than enough candles to do us the night." He entered the room as the detective continued readying the fireplace for use. "Imagine how strange the city must look now," A streak of lightning illuminated them all momentarily, and a resounding crash of thunder followed it. "Not that anyone with any grain of sense is out and about!"

"Zed!" Holmes and Watson looked at Lestrade as she cursed, tapping at her communicator. "Whatever knocked out the power must've been a doozy, the interlink's not working either…" She cursed again. "I can't even get the_ web_! What about you, Watson? Can you log onto anything?"

Just as Holmes made a sound of triumph for successfully starting the fireplace burning after two centuries of malpractice, Watson shook his head. "I'm sorry, Inspector. The power center of the city must be affected, that's where—"

"That's where all the signals come and go, yeah I know, I know." Lestrade looked up with some surprise as Holmes surveyed his small accomplishment with more pride than seemed appropriate. "Way to go, caveman. You rediscovered fire." She snapped sarcastically, already feeling the itch that came with being cut off from technology. "Seriously, I hate being out of the loop. If Grayson needs anything or if something happens…"

"You certainly would not be able to do anything about it in this weather anyway." Holmes said with more benevolence than usual. The window lit up with lightning again as he eased back into his chair, puffing away on his pipe. "Best that you were here nonetheless. Otherwise you would be without heat and good company." He grinned somewhat mischievously at that as Lestrade snorted.

The three of them sat for a time in silence, looking into the flames as they grew steadily; Holmes with his pipe, Lestrade clearly in deep thought, and Watson tapping a finger against the arm of his chair. When the inspector let out a sigh, their attention was drawn to her. "For goodness' sake, Lestrade, speak your mind before you drive yourself mad. I assume I have something stuck in my hair to deserve a stare of that intensity." Holmes announced, patting down his head in hopes of drawing out some ash or a wood chip.

She shook her head. "Actually, I just noticed something really weird the other day. About _you,_ Holmes." He raised one eyebrow imperiously at her pointed finger. "I dunno if Watson's noticed, since he sees you everyday, but I haven't seen you guys in two weeks, and you've actually changed!" Of course, it probably didn't make any sense at all when she said it like that. She most likely sounded insane, given the way Holmes was looking at Watson. "I thought I noticed something a while ago, but I wasn't sure. This time I'm positive though!"

The looks the two exchanged were, to her chagrin, not only confused, but rather disconcerted. "My dear Lestrade, this is the part where you inform us of your observations." Holmes pointed out with a mildly curious glance. "_What _has changed?"

She tucked her feet beneath her and leaned forward on the couch, pointing at him as was her method when wound up on a case. "First of all, and _definitely_ most noticeable are the eyes." Watson leaned forward immediately to look, causing Holmes to turn a delicate shade of pink. "Two months ago they were that darkish bluish color—"

"Darkish bluish, Lestrade? Praytell wherever did you gain such astute powers of description?"

"Can it, Holmes." She snapped. "Anyway, a month ago I thought they looked a lot lighter, but I wasn't sure, since I was around you all the time." Lestrade held up her index finger with a singularly superior expression she had clearly copied from Holmes. "_But_! When I came over for dinner the other day after two nice, peaceful, dull weeks away from you guys, I looked again and it was _obvious_!"

"_What_ was obvious?" Watson asked curiously while Holmes merely rolled his eyes, sighing exasperatedly.

"They're not blue." Lestrade said simply. "They're gray!"

"They are _no—_by jove, Holmes! They are!"

Before he could even reply, Holmes found himself with a friend at each eye, examining it minutely. "If you would kindly allow me to breathe, I believe Lestrade has another observation to share?"

"Huh?" She blinked. "Oh, well, it's a lot less noticeable, but your hair's getting darker all the time. It was practically bleach blond when we met, now it's nearly brown." She placed her chin in her hand. "Although what I don't get is why all of it only started happening in the last few months."

"Well, I can answer that easily enough." Holmes stately firmly, drawing his knees up to his chest and laying his chin on them, looking far more peaceful than he had in weeks as he looked into the fire. "Sir Evan Hargreaves explained it to me shortly after I was revived." He seemed lost in thought for a moment, staring into the fireplace vaguely.

Watson blinked and leaned forward again, setting a hand on his friend's shoulder. "Holmes? Are you all right?"

As quickly as his mind had fled it appeared to return and Holmes nodded immediately. "I ah… I apologize. I got lost in thought."

"Not surprising." Lestrade snorted. "Anyway, you were saying?"

"Mmh…" Holmes drummed his fingers on his shins, "I'm afraid I only know what the man told me, and at the time I was rather… well, I wasn't listening with the greatest attention." He shrugged. "However, from what I recall the process of cell rejuvenation doesn't restore pigment as easily as it does the rest of the body. So while the body returns to its original state of being, things such as skin tone, hair color and the shade of the irises typically aren't as they once were."

"So shouldn't your eyes have been pink or something?" Lestrade suggested blankly.

Holmes shook his head with a scoff. "I did not say pigment didn't exist. I said it doesn't go back to how it should be as quickly as everything else. Therefore, I have spent the last year or so with blond hair and blue eyes when anyone who knew me from _my _time would recognize me as having _black_ hair and _gray _eyes. Luckily, my skin is just as it always was, if a bit darker than before." He sighed, pleased to have the explanation over with. "I was _quite _happy to see things going back to normal," He confessed. "I've had a deucedly difficult time recognizing myself in the mirror like this." He gestured to his darkening, but still quite blond hair.

The silence that followed spanned ten minutes, with only the howling storm supplying any noise. Eventually, Holmes sighed softly. "This reminds me of my time," He confessed in rare sentimental tones. "Between the fire and the storm outside, I could recall many comfortable nights spent in this very spot." He sank further into his armchair; the very picture of contentment.

Lestrade looked up with a hesitant expression. "Do you miss it?" She ventured to ask. Typically Holmes shot down personal questions with all the cool proficiency of a sniper rifle. Tonight, however, he looked genuinely thoughtful, and so she took a gamble and pried a bit more. "I mean… you don't regret coming back, do you?"

Holmes refilled his pipe with his eyes glazed over in thought, lighting it and inhaling the smoke without missing a beat. For almost twenty minutes he sat, during which time his companions recognized the look of concentration on his face and returned to their own internal musing, until with a start he sat up, stirring Lestrade out of a state of dozing and Watson from his examination of the fire. "No!" The Great Detective said solidly, smiling ever so slightly.

"No… what?" Watson inquired.

"To both of our dear Beth's inquiries, Watson." Lestrade blinked at the rare use of her forename. "No, I don't miss Victorian England. How could I miss it in good mind? I cannot return there, nor would I wish to now. I was labeled as a bohemian already in my time, and I can only imagine this modern culture has degenerated me further still." Holmes leaned forward and planted his elbows on his knees, steepling his fingers and staring at the grate. "No, I do not regret what has happened. Better men than I have wished for a second chance at life, and I was given it. I can't deny that I've… occasionally felt bitter for the situation I'm in, but I know as long as Moriarty continues to cause his brand of chaos I have a legitimate reason to exist in this society. Until the day comes when my welcome has worn, I'm content to remain." He grinned then, the impish expression that had never been described in the Doctor's journals. "Now, what shall we do until the power returns?"

It turned out that the power center of New London had been almost completely torn apart by three consecutive lightning strikes, and when the storm cleared, thousands of citizens swarmed to local stadiums for heat when the late autumn chill invaded their homes. The city lapsed into a weeklong state of panic after the storm passed during the night.

In Baker Street?

Well, thanks to the fireplace and Holmes' good sense in stocking up on wood, they spent the nights quite warm indeed. Lestrade's invitation to stay was extended to the Irregulars, who extended it (against Holmes' wishes) to _their_ friends. While the Great Detective, Inspector, and Doctor braved the stuffy stadiums during the day, doing their bit as part of New Scotland Yard(Well, Lestrade was required to help, and she wasn't willing to suffer alone _"I'm your superior officer, Holmes, and I say you're coming!"_) the Irregulars meandered around the streets.

By the time seven o'clock rolled around, however, the sitting room would be packed with teenagers, all of whom were shouting over each other. Holmes's patience was shot within the first evening, and thereafter he lurked in his bedroom, which would sufficiently heat up within an extra few hours. Lestrade, being a Yardie and therefore an authority figure among even the most rebellious teens, was quick establishing rules and commandeering the couch(again) for herself. Watson came home and immediately shut down, unwilling to suffer the crowd _or_ Holmes's short temper.

All in all it went without a flaw, until Deidre discovered Holmes's change in eyecolor and proceeded to flaunt him about his own sitting room like a prized show dog. Despite the general gushing of "Tha's such a _cool_ color, Mister 'Olmes!" And "I wish I 'ad eyes that changed color!", nothing could make up for the sea of estrogen that was a gaggling group of teenage females that thought since Deidre knew him personally, they could play with his hair and practically tie him down to coo without straining their necks. To make it worse, he distinctly observed Lestrade informing a herd of them that he really did enjoy people touching his hair.

He _hated_ that!

The New London Outage of 2203 was the longest period a large city went without power for almost twenty years. Most remembered it as a time of crowded stadiums, limited food, and poor humor. Baker Street remembered it fondly as a time of revelations, fireplaces, and hair bows.


End file.
